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Tuesday, 23 October 2012

Indeed - a "handful of horror" for more reasons than one. A very small horror in the palm of my hand pictured here. Read on for more... ;)

I remember when I considered October a busy month simply because I had to find time outside of work to make a Halloween costume, plan a Halloween party (which I was known for throwing every spooky season back in London) and pick out a birthday gift for my mum - whose birthday is the day before.

Not the case anymore! Since I established my small business - Pixie Dust Miniatures - October has become my crazy-busiest month because sales, commissions and demand is greater than any other time of year. It's brilliant being so busy.
So.... probably not really the very best time to fall ill with flu and bronchitis and spend 2.5 weeks either in bed or in the doctor's office a few days into October...

But my name's not Caroline Tenacious McFarlane-Watts for nothing, and so I am now happily back on track! Thought I'd share some Halloween miniatures I made for collectors this season, plus some to be used as Myrtle background props (short film - 'Myrtle the Witch'). I've fallen behind with Myrtle due to being unwell, but I'll soon catch up and share updates.

Finally, I leave you with a commission I completed this week - one inch scale opossums. They measure just less than 2 inches from nose to tail and have soft downy fur. They fly to Texas this afternoon. Bon voyage possums.

Tuesday, 2 October 2012

The first test I did the other day (blogged about here) had some problems. I tried again last night and have popped the results up on Vimeo so you can continue to see my progress.

Annoying thing is the quality of my video went to hell when I had to compress it to upload it to Vimeo... vexing. On my computer it looks so sharp and beautiful and really got me excited about how gorgeous 'Myrtle the Witch' is going to look, but on Vimeo it looks so bad! Nevermind - gives you an idea of the camera motion which is what these tests are all about. :)

Again, the set is not dressed. This is not what Myrtle's world will look like... it will be far far better. What's filmed here is again what was left out from a recent photo shoot for Pixie Dust Miniatures.

Last night we finally did a few tests filming some miniatures using the slider.

The scene is not dressed or anything - it's just some fairly random miniature pieces, a backdrop and some furniture. It's all we needed. The test is okay but I think it moves a tad too fast (this is the slowest we're able to go at the moment), it's still a bit jerky and I also feel that the motion blur isn't right yet. Will make some changes and shoot more tests again tonight.

....So, not perfect, but to keep you all in the loop - here's my first camera test up on Vimeo. ;)

Aside from the test, to those of you who emailed since my last post about the macro lens... you're right - the last post didn't really show the lens off. So I took some more photos and I think you'll agree we get some serious close up detail. You'll also notice that even using f/20 it's still really shallow though which is what I meant when I said it was limiting. The spider cake tray below is 1, 6/16 inch in length - photographed from 4 inches away at f/20, and the piece of cake closest to the lens is soft.